Amazon, B&N, Kobo: iOS aps to be pulled in June

[wyndslash]

Originally Posted by Horemheb

Same here.

true. all this stuff with geo restrictions and ebook price issues is making me lean towards finishing up ebook classics first. i need to read more books with substance anyway

[Horemheb]

Originally Posted by wyndslash

geo restrictions

Yeah, you are right. Geo restrictions make my blood boil. I started this topic and listed geo restrictions as one of the main problems in being an e-book customer.

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by Horemheb

No offense but this is an extremely naive notion about how this actually works. Business to customer (B2C) type of business is utterly different from business to business (B2B) type of business. Different CRM and billing processes different regulations to adhere to etc. There is no way a serious publisher wants the trouble of B2C.


They are not retailes now either.


Exactly. Customers want to buy ALL books. Not just from one publisher. The chances that the wannabe retailer publisher will get contracts with other publishers is not too high. And this is an understatement.

Yeah, exactly. It's *really hard* to do this right, which is why competitors to Amazon are few and far between. And, leaving aside anti-trust issues, there are inevitably going to be all kinds of disagreements concerning which books get prominent placement - does each publisher get an equal share of the front page? If you recommend books based on someone's reading habits, do you have to recommend on book from each publisher?

And is it really a good idea to compete against your biggest customer?

[ApK]

Originally Posted by Visuddhi

Amazon became popular at the beginning because people could buy basically any book they wanted, and it was delivered straight to their door.

Amazon became popular because they operated at a loss for the first few years, selling books at impossibly low prices. Word spread quickly.
THEN once they had popularity, and proved themselves with service and selection, they raised prices to sustainable levels and became profitable.
I wish I was smart enough to buy stock back then.

[Horemheb]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

which is why competitors to Amazon are few and far between

Yeah, and the dominance of Amazon is not a comforting fact either. The only thing effectively protecting the interests of the customers is competition. Once there is no real competition in an area customers become helpless.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by Horemheb

Yeah, and the dominance of Amazon is not a comforting fact either. The only thing effectively protecting the interests of the customers is competition. Once there is no real competition in an area customers become helpless.

If there is no competition simply because customers prefer one business over all others, that's fine. That business will either keep customers happy, or someone will start up a new business that customers prefer.

It's only if a business uses unfair practices to suppress competition that there would be a problem, and we have anti-trust laws for that reason.

Witness AT&T.

ApK

[stonetools]

Just one thing more....
John Gruber has published his analysis of the new Apple subscription policy, and he said things much better than I . Of course the anti Apple folks will dismiss him as an Apple fan boy , but then you have to actually debunk his arguments step by step to convince the objective bystander. Good luck with that. .

Read the whole thing:

http://daringfireball.net/2011/03/dirty_percent

Money quote:

iOS isn’t and never was an open computer system. It’s a closed, controlled console system — more akin to Playstation or Wii or Xbox than to Mac OS X or Windows. It is, in Apple’s view, a privilege to have a native iOS app.

This is what galls some: Apple is doing this because they can, and no other company is in a position to do it. This is not a fear that in-app subscriptions will fail because Apple’s 30 percent slice is too high, but rather that in-app subscriptions will succeed despite Apple’s (in their minds) egregious profiteering. I.e. that charging what the market will bear is somehow unscrupulous. To the charge that Apple Inc. is a for-profit corporation run by staunch capitalists, I say, “Duh”.

If it works, Apple’s 30-percent take of in-app subscriptions will prove as objectionable in the long run as the App Store itself: not very.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by stonetools

Of course the anti Apple folks will dismiss him as an Apple fan boy,...

Fan boy

[Graham]

Originally Posted by stonetools

Money quote:

If it works, ...

i.e. even Gruber's saying this might be a step too far.

Graham

[Horemheb]

Originally Posted by stonetools

have to actually debunk his arguments step by step

You are extremely unabashed. We do not have to do anything. We are the customers. Apple is the one who should do something for the customers and who should handle its matters ethically and fairly. Apple epicly failed about it as well as you failed as an Apple rep.

to convince the objective bystander.

You are becoming more and more ridiculous and pathetic. The objective bystander (pretty much everyone else but you) is already convinced that Apple's claim is unethical and baseless.

[stonetools]

JUst to show that I'm not just all Apple fanboy, here's a article by Josh Benton, who is certainly critical of Apple's interventions in the news and book industry. In fact, he has written a whole series of thoughtful articles on what digital media means for the news business, well worth reading.

An excerpt from an article:

In the two months since the iPad launched — and with it Apple’s new ebook platform, iBooks — Apple has taken over a remarkable 22 percent of the ebook market. (That’s based on data from five of the six major publishing companies; the sixth, Random House, isn’t on the iPad.)

In one sentence, Jobs revealed more hard data about ebook sales than Amazon has in 2.5 years of the Kindle. (I exaggerate, but only slightly. Amazon still hasn’t unveiled any hard numbers on Kindle device or ebook sales. Maybe this will prompt them.)

Those Apple ebook sales are based on the 2 million iPads sold, which are the only Apple devices that have iBooks. But iBooks is coming to the iPhone and iPod touch later this month — around the same time Jobs said the 100 millionth iPhone OS device will be sold. In other words, iBooks’ momentum is about to get punched up.

http://www.niemanlab.org/2010/06/app...bile-strategy/

That was back in June 2010. I'm betting iOS has a much bigger chunk of the ebook market now-and that's without Random House (now in the tent) and without trying all that hard (We all agree the iBooks store could be much better).What this means is that like it or not the iOS platform really will be come dominant for ebook sales soon. What THAT means, I'm not sure.

[Horemheb]

Originally Posted by stonetools

An excerpt from an article:

It is astonishing how you don't get tired of vomiting Apple propaganda here. Wait, right, you don't get tired because you are paid to do so.

[Worldwalker]

Originally Posted by stonetools

Of course the anti Apple folks will dismiss him as an Apple fan boy....

And that's exactly the problem:

You think there are "anti-Apple folks" who dislike Apple because of something unrelated to whether or not Apple sells devices that they want. You think that people who don't buy Apple devices do so because of some baseless dislike for the company that makes them. You are really beginning to remind me of the people who claim others don't like their writing because of jealousy of their great writing ability (people who, by the way, are inevitably bad writers).

I won't say there aren't anti-Apple folks out there because this is, after all, the world that gave us Rule 34 and proves it on a daily basis. When it comes to what's going on in people's heads, anything you can imagine is possible. I met a guy yesterday who had a Honda logo tattooed on his leg. But aside from the people out on the thin and wobbly ends of the curve, people don't have some strange antipathy toward Apple just because. Sure, it's easier to respond to them that way. "You're just an anti-Apple person, so it's useless saying anything." It saves a lot of effort (not to mention marketing). And you don't have to take the mental risk of acknowledging that you might be wrong about how great some Apple device is; it's the best there is, and you know it's the best there is, and anyone who disagrees is just being irrational. Yeah, that's safe ... but it's not very realistic.

There are several companies I won't do business with because of their business policies and practices. (I should mention that Apple isn't one of them) That's a matter of deciding where to spend my dollar: if I have the choice of a company which acts in ways I consider beneficial and its competitor which acts in ways I consider harmful, I'm going to spend my money with the one I consider beneficial. But even that isn't a matter of "liking" or "hating" either company. It's pragmatism: "These guys are doing what I want, so I'll reward them by doing business with them in the hope of encouraging this behavior." It's not about feeling warm and fuzzy toward either one of them.

Saying that people who disagree with you are doing so strictly for emotional reasons is a stop-loss strategy. It might keep the people who already agree with you from changing their minds and disagreeing. It does not, however, get the people who disagree with you to change their minds and agree with you. The people who disagree are not doing so for emotional reasons, and when you tell them they are, they dismiss you as being out of touch with them, and therefore not likely to say anything they would find useful. It's the last refuge of the person who has no valid reasons for a position other than emotion. And, well, it's just about what I'd expect from the "don't hold it that way!" people.

[Graham]

Originally Posted by stonetools

JUst to show that I'm not just all Apple fanboy...

... you selectively clip an article from 9 months ago that shows Apple in a good light.

The article was discussed extensively here on MR, as have more recent articles updating us on the relative positions of Apple, Amazon and their competitors.

You might also want to review the subsequent "oops" from Apple where they admitted it was more like 8 to 10%:

http://seekingalpha.com/article/2093...s?source=yahoo

Graham

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by stonetools

Just one thing more....
John Gruber has published his analysis of the new Apple subscription policy, and he said things much better than I . Of course the anti Apple folks will dismiss him as an Apple fan boy , but then you have to actually debunk his arguments step by step to convince the objective bystander. Good luck with that. .

Read the whole thing:

http://daringfireball.net/2011/03/dirty_percent

Money quote:

Which is exactly the way Apple has operated since its inception. And the reason I do not like their way or doing business. And will not do business with them unless there is no other choice.